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Children's books?

My sweets, Toby and I love to read before bedtime. But we've read the same books over and over and are looking for a few more to spice up our repertoire. Do you have any favorite children's books? Was there a book you especially adored when you were little? We'd love to hear! xoxo

That is such a sweet photo of you two:) How about the Hungry Caterpillar story? They have a version for little babies with a cute toy and each page is very colourful and perfect for little reader:)Kisses,JoannaHappy Holiday Monday:)

Ps: I posted a cool bubble video this morning...If you have a chance, check it out. I bet you will like it:)

Good story about how sometimes you just shouldnt take your friends advice...I loved it so much that a couple years I found it on ebay and had to have it, a couple days later my new puppy chewed it up, so disappointing.

We loved the Jan Brett board books. For when they are a little older, all the Chris Van Allsburg books are beautifully illustrated (Jumanji, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi)and I actually love the Madonna books because she hires the best illustrators (especially love The Adventures of Abdi and Lotsa de Casha)

This was my all time favorite book. When I was old enough to know how, I even made the little figures with felt and put them around my room haha. I WANT TO READ IT RIGHT NOW!! ...i even found the amazon link for you ;)http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=safari&q=the+root+children&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&cid=6446889883861863095&ei=NASFTJ2eKpOW2ASr5aCiAw&sa=title&ved=0CA0Q8wIwATgA#p

since birth - I love you because you're you by lisa baker has been a favorite.

also any sandra boynton but especially snuggle puppy (her songs are funny too, we got the cds from the library).

I do child book reviews on my blog - here's an archive - http://parentplanet.wordpress.com/archive-child-book-reviews/my son is almost three and quite advanced verbally for his age and very smart so most of these would be too old right now but will be good in a short while.

Two of my favorite Australian books growing up were Koala Lou - I do love you and Possum Magic both by Mem Fox.. The illustrations are beautiful and filled with all the native Australian animals that I would see every day :) Will be a must for my babies!

Okay first off, LOVE that picture! My recommendations: The Very Hungry Catepillar, Love You Forever, Fox on Socks (for the repetition), Goodnight Moon, anything in the Brown Bear Brown Bear series (there's also Panda bear panda bear and polar bear polar bear), The Pokey Little Puppy, and I'm sure there are tons more I just can't think of right now!

I love children's books! My favorite Halloween story as a child (perfect for this time of year) was "The Witch Who was Afraid of Witches". I prefer Karen Gundersheimer's 1970s illustrations compared to the current illustrations. Another good one, when Toby is older and refuses to go to bed, "Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!" by Dr. Suess. Enjoy!

As far as bedtime stories go, The Napping House by Audrey Wood, The Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown, Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathman, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Mark Teague. For a truly hilarious book: Space Case by Edward Marshall (try the audio version too - you will laugh out loud). Just plain beautiful and timeless: Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco, Strega Nona by Tomie DePaola, Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina, anything by Maurice Sendak. Toby will need to grow into most of these books, but some he might appreciate now: Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt, Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle, and Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton. Sorry such a long list - kinda my passion.

Some of my kids' faves: Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear; Jamberry; Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus; Runaway Bunny; Chicka Chicka Boom Boom; Keith Haring books, Big and Ten (might be out of print); any of the Todd Parr books. Enjoy!

When I babysat my little cousin, we would read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" over and over again, but he'd just want to stare at the pages with the sugary food (cookies, lollipop, etc.) Love that book for that reason.

The "ish" book is great, as is "Harold and the Purple Crayon."

Joanna, Toby is coming into his own look more and more every day. You can really tell in this pic. Incredible!

one of my favorites as a child was "The High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake" in which a young girl wants to bake her mother a special birthday cake and is helped by some very interesting angels. Beautiful illustrations and an unusual story.

Goodnight Moon is always a classic, I really liked Corduroy and I'll Love you Forever. There's a series of books by Laura Numeroff that are great, including If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, etc

i KNOW that toby is way to young for this but my mom used to read us one chapter a night of the best chapter books. When he gets older you should read him "All of a Kind Family" and "Little Lord Fontleroy" Every night we would all squeal because the chapter ended at a cliffhanger and we would have to wait until tomorrow to hear the next chapter.

Well, since you mentioned Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, have you ever read the other Pigeon books by Mo Willems? They're all hysterical, but my personal favorite is Pigeon Wants a Puppy. :-)

And Jon Scieszka does a bunch of fractured fairy tales that make me laugh. I'm not sure Toby will appreciate them just yet, but when I read The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales to a 3rd grade class, they thought it was hysterical. They also liked The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by the same author.

"Olivia Saves The Circus" was our book of the month going-to-bed book for our 2 yr (+3months) old son a few months back! Definitely a fun one.

Our current read for the past couple of months is "Martha the Movie Mouse" (1966) by Arnold Lobel, author of "Frog and Toad are Friends" which my son loves loves loves. The old old children's book was sent to us from my mother-in-law, my hubby being the only child, they had saved every item (including a boxful of his favorite books) from his childhood! They also saved his first shoes, his first silverware, his first stuffed Snoopy, his first PJs, his first drawing from preschool etc etc etc.

Anyway...it's totally sweet to watch my son and hubby bond over their favorite book ;P

my favorite topic - children's books - there are so many & so fun to read all the other commentor's & find that we've loved many of the same! My son is 6 now but he still loves to re-read his "baby" books. Our favorite was:

Anything by Robert Munsch was my favourite as a kid. I loved yelling along to "50 Below Zero" with my dad. Alligator Pie by Dennis Lee and Frank Newfield has tons of silly poems in it that I loved as well.

Definitely Helen Cooper collection: A Pipkin of Pepper, Pumpkin Soup, Tatty Ratty, Delicious etc. The illustration is so cute and the stories are soooo adorable as well. My daughters already remember all the stories and we read them together out loud.

there was a book about a mouse and a giant ripe strawberry that i loved. and also eloise. of course. i still love eloise. Not sure it's for little Toby though. i also loved the very hungry caterpillar.

good graphics are important. it will teach him to have excellent taste. though with you as his mommy im' sure that will be no problem!!

I see over a hundred comments here so I feel certain you've seen these titles before, but just to add to the many wonderful recommendations: (I tend to really LOVE the tried and true books published years ago.)

1. Goodnight, Moon2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar3. Where the Wild Things Are4. Harold and the Purple Crayon5. Madeline6. Corduroy7, The Little House8. Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel9. The Story of Ferdinand10. The Snowy Day

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Not for their stories, but for their fantastic photos that babies really love to look at, point to, etc., we buy these boardbooks for all of our friends and family who have babies.Baby Faces

(I swear I don't work for DK Publishing-- I'm actually a reading specialist.) The boardbooks they publish with the photographs of objects, animals and people are completely wonderful! They help teach the names for things, colors, counting, the alphabet. Since photographs resemble the way things look in real life, it's easier for children to label properly, as opposed to an abstract illustration of a dog that has the same meaning as the family pet (if that makes sense).

We bought DK boardbooks of My First ABC Book, as well as their books on trucks, tractors, farm animals, etc. for our little nephew and our godson, and they still love them.

I'm sure you've checked out the other mo willems books. so fun! also love anything by eric carle.

"the carrot seed""happy birthday moon""where the wild things are""not a box""blueberries for sal""click, clack moo""chicka chicka boom boom""it looked like spilt milk""alexander & the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day""cloudy with a chance of meatballs"the "skippyjon jones" books are cute (the audio versions are great!)and if you want to cry: "the giving tree"

oh, and living in nyc, you will love "the escape of marvin the ape"!! :)

some of my favorites are:-happy birthday, moon-the snowy day by ezra jack keats-a chair for my mother-harold and the purple crayon-tikki tikki tembo-madeline-caps for sale-swimmy-in the night kitchen-harry the dirty dog-sometimes im bombaloo-the napping house-the little mouse, the red ripe strawberry, and the big hungry bear-goodnight gorilla-kittens first full moon-i'm as quick as a cricket-jamberry-mouse paint

By far my favourite book growing up was the Little Engine That Could....I still love it. I now love it because of the message behind the story, not sure if I understood what it really meant was I young, but it was "my" book.Cheers!

Caps for Sale (my nephew ran around for weeks after I gave him this one wagging his finger at everyone and quoting "you monkeys you!")

Daniel Pinkwater's fantastic The Big Orange Splot is my go-to baby shower book because everyone should have it!

and there are a series of french graphic novel-style picture books about a little dog named Polo: the best are The Adventures of Polo and The Runaway Book. My nephew could pore over the little pictures for hours!

The Grouchy Ladybug - Eric Carle. and Goodnight Moon. All the Dr. Seuss books and all of the Berenstein Bears - especially Bears in the Night - I read it so much we had to duct tape it to keep it together! Oh and the original Hans Christian Anderson and Grimms Brothers stories for when he's older. They're a must.

joanna, i can't recommend the following enough -- "small one" by zhenya gay.

my gram read it to all of us kids as small children & although it may be hard to find [first published in 1958 or 1959], it would be worth it. we still hold gram's copy dear to our hearts. it's a darling little story about a baby bunny. when i think of the best moments of my childhood, it's tucked in the twin bed at gram's house, & reading this story.

anything by Margaret Wise Brown, the bunny book is so sweet and gentleditto anything by Dick Bruna the Petunia books by Roger Duvoisin Pelle's New Suit by Elsa Beskow (all her work is really lovely) all Brambly Hedge Stories by Jill Barkem the Mr Men books everything by John Burningham

i am about to open a little vintage children's bookshop so perhaps you might like to have a look when we're open?

This is going to sound like an ad but during one of our reading time, I was inspired by the titles of my daughters' books on the shelf that I took some of their fave reads and created a poster on my store,

I am so glad "Goodnight Moon" is so well-loved. I adored that book so much my mom would lose it on top of the fridge every now and again so she could read something, anything else.I would recommend "On Mother's Lap" by Ann Herbert Scott and "Moo Baa La La La" by Sandra Boynton.Happy reading!

You've had quite a lot of suggestions already, but one of my favourites is The Church Mice series. Despite the title, it is not religious. It is about a group of mice that live in a church and a benevolent cat called Samson who takes care of them and gets them out of various scrapes. It is BEAUTIFULLY illustrated.

I loved Tuesday by David Wiesner. It's about frogs that one night can fly! The catch (and reason I loved it) was that there were no words and my dad would make up the story, giving the frogs different voices every time.

Its quite some time since my daughter was wee enough for m to read to her but we both loved the followingSomething Else by Kathryn Cave & Chris RiddellHairy Maclary books by Lynley Doddand anything by Babette Cole who is just a genius

As a kid's book connoisseur (at 28, my mother still gives me kids' books for every holiday) I definitely feel you CAN judge a book by its cover. Having said that, I really prefer books with beautiful illustrations over cutesy stories that you can only stand to read twice before they totally annoy you. So, on the beautiful illustration front (with good stories that won't totally irritate you): -Anything by Jan Brett-The Gates of the Wind (Kathryn Lasky)--The Fiddler of the Northern Lights (Natalie Kinsey-Warnock--A Chair for my Mother (I remembered this from kindergarten, and finally bought it for myself at age 25) by Vera Williams--The Tomten and the Fox (Astrid Lindgren)--Miss Rumphius (Barbara Cooney)--The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher (Molly Bang)

And I have to second a few of those above: The Little House; Mike Mulligan and His Steamshovel -- definitely on the best ever list.